Is abortion legal in China?Abortion in China is legal and is a government service available on request for women except in cases of sex-selective abortion.In addition to virtually universal access to contraception, abortion is a way for China to contain its population in accordance withits one-child policy.How many abortions are performed in China?New data published by China's National Health and Family Planning Commission indicates that there are more than 13 millionabortions conducted in the country every year, highlighting the huge reliance on the procedure as it seeks to restrain population growth.​China's One Child Policy Backfires: ​For a generation now, the number of boys being born in China has greatly outstripped thenumber of girls. This gender imbalance reached a peak of 1.22 to 1 in 2008, and is now about 1.16 to 1. By 2020, the NationalPopulation and Family Planning Commission projects that males of marrying age will outnumber females by at least 30 million.Historically, China has been a patriarchal culture in which the subjugation of women is symbolized most cruelly by the phenomenonof bound feet, a practice that didn’t disappear entirely until the early 20th century.The combination of China’s one child policy and the advent of sonograms has meant that families who preferred a songet what they wanted, aborting unwanted girls. The gender imbalance is a function of what Lauren Johnston, a Ph.D. student atPeking University writing a book on the subject, calls “the familial race to have an heir,” greatly intensified by the one-child policy,which until 2015 had been in effect since 1980.